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The other G20: Could the G(irls)20 be the real key to global propserity?

ELEANOR HALL: As Australia prepares to host its largest meeting of world leaders at the G20 summit in Brisbane in November, thousands of international delegates are already meeting in Australia to help drive the agenda for the meeting.

The G20 is intended to stimulate global growth.

But a Canadian social entrepreneur who has just arrived in Sydney says it's another G20, the G(irls)20, that's the real key to future global prosperity.

Farah Mohamed set up the G(irls)20 five years ago, bringing together teenage girls from all 20 countries at the economic forum.

She joined me a short time ago in The World Today studio.

Farah Mohamed, what is the G(irls)20 and how does it link into the G20?

FARAH MOHAMED: So the G(irls)20 is an organisation that's Canadian-based, it's globally active, and what we do is we take the G20 leaders' agenda and we say, look, if you're serious about growth, and that's what the G20 is about, then you need to look at how to use your human resources, and 50 per cent of those human resources are girls and women.

And so, we take their agenda, we come back to them with ideas: how do they reach their growth targets by involving, from an economic point of view, girls and women.

And so the biggest difference between us is the people around our table are 18-20 years of age; they're one from each G20 country, plus Afghanistan, Pakistan and the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). And we're here to give them advice.

The other thing I'd say is G(irls)20 is a very innovative social enterprise in that we bring these young women together in Australia this year for 10 days and for the first five days, we invest in them through skill sets. So, we have local Australian companies working with us to provide content.

So it's a really amazing, invest in the girls, give the G20 leaders ideas and then have the girls go back to their communities and put those ideas into action.

ELEANOR HALL: Why a separate grouping for girls? I mean why not be part of the Youth 20 or even bring women into the Business 20?

FARAH MOHAMED: Yeah look, I mean the best thing that could happen is I'll talk myself out of a job one day, but we need to have a G(irls)20 as long as we're not at areas where we should be. So we don't have equal representation.

So, you know, we do work very closely with the Y20; in fact, I was on their panel this year. The B20, I'll be attending that tomorrow and the day after.

But ultimately, until leaders understand the full capacity that women and girls bring to the table from an economic point of view, I think the G(irls)20 has a role to play, and a very important, strategic role to play.

ELEANOR HALL: So what issues will you be pushing that are different from, say, the issues that would be raised in the youth summit?

FARAH MOHAMED: You know, the issues that we pick are very much aligned with the G20. I'm one of those people who thinks, if you want people to hear you, speak to them in the language that they care about. So we'll be looking at infrastructure, and from that I mean agriculture, so we know that when women own land - own land, not just work land - their outputs would be greater.

If they make more money, women spend 90 per cent of what they earn on their families and their communities compared to men who spend 30-40. Now, this is not about empowering women by disempowering men; it's about how do actually maximise that return on investment, to engage women on the workforce?

ELEANOR HALL: How do you convince the business leaders that engaging women, and specifically engaging girls, because the group you're talking here are teenagers, how do you convince business people that engaging these girls is actually good for the economy?

FARAH MOHAMED: Well look, in different countries, there's different levels of engagement. Here in Australia, I'm really happy to hear that you have something called Male Champions of Change, and these are CEOs. They know that the output would be greater if they women on their boards.

Organisations who have women in their senior management, they produce about 30 per cent more than if they don't. So the B20 should pay attention to the G(irls)20, because we are the future leadership.

If we don't invest in these young women in all these different countries - developed and developing - you're not going to have the leadership you need when you need them to take over.

ELEANOR HALL: I guess the question again though is why girls and not young people?

FARAH MOHAMED: Sure, I mean, I will take that question and I'll say, let's look specifically at the fact that we're doing 18-20-year-old girls. So they are in their developmental years; they're making decisions around their career; they're making decisions around their academics.

If we get them now and we get them involved and we have them see that engineering is a great career for them or farming or whatever they choose to be, the pool of talent will be bigger for CEOs.

ELEANOR HALL: Now, you mention you're here for the Business 20 in Sydney this week. It only has two women speakers and no female taskforce leaders. Why not join existing groups like that and help improve them, rather than setting up a sort of competing grouping?

FARAH MOHAMED: Well, G(irls)20's been around for five years and every country is different. We would love to join the B20 if they'd like us to. We do have different roles, and I think your Government has been very clear that they want to hear from different players.

We could join the B20, I suppose, and we do need to have more women at the table, there's no doubt about it, but we're making inroads, and I think we're raising the bar this year in Australia, so that, when we go to Turkey next year, there's only one way to go and that's up.

ELEANOR HALL: There are already plenty of political and business leaders though who question the value of the G20 itself, partly because it's becoming too unwieldy. Isn't your Girls 20 in a sense exacerbating that problem of unwieldiness?

FARAH MOHAMED: Absolutely not.

If we were talking about things that didn't matter to the G20, then yes, I think that we are no doing a service, but the fact that we're talking about the issues that they're talking about and we're coming to them with recommendations, concrete recommendations.

And I'll give you an example: we know that access to the internet is a game-changer for women, whether it comes to information about health, job opportunities, education - we know that these three things will make a difference to economies being built. So why not have governments make sure that whatever building they build, that building has WiFi access - that's a game-changer.

So, if they can be an idea that comes from G(irls)20, and it can enable and engage women in those communities, I don't think that's being disruptive; I actually think that's being very helpful.

ELEANOR HALL: Well Farah Mohamed, good luck and thanks very much for joining us.

FARAH MOHAMED: Thank you very much.

ELEANOR HALL: That's Farah Mohamed, the Canadian social entrepreneur who set up the G(irls)20.